A Process-Oriented Approach to
Engineering Cyberinfrastructure
EAC-CI Charge
• The EAC-CI will work with the Engineering • Francine Berman
Directorate's Cyberinfrastructure Working (SDSC and UCSD) (Chair)
Group (CIWG) to help assess the
opportunities and challenges for the • James Bernard
Engineering Directorate in (Iowa State University)
Cyberinfrastructure.
• Cherri Pancake
• The EAC-CI will provide advice on how the (Oregon State University)
Engineering Directorate can contribute to the
design, development, deployment, and use of • Lilian Wu
Cyberinfrastructure to promote discoveries (IBM Corporation)
and innovations in engineering.
• Jo Culbertson
• Particular areas of discussion will include: (NSF ENG)
1. What milestones should be used to measure
progress of CI, and what metrics should be • Abhi Deshmukh
used to assess the impact of CI on Engineering (NSF Eng)
research, education, and innovation?
2. What kinds of activities should ENG encourage
• Thanks to Suvrajeet Sen,
to build a Cyberinfrastructure community formerly of NSF ENG, for all his
among Engineers? help

SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER

Fran Berman
EAC-CI Report
Recommendations
¾ Assessment of ENG investments
in CI and user community needs
¾ Coordination with OCI and other
directorates
¾ Planning process to determine
ENG priorities and investment
plans
¾ Building the Innovation Loop to
enable engineering grand
challenges, and coordinate CI
research, development and
deployment
Assessment Recommendations
Î Process for identifying an evolving portfolio of representative projects
requiring CI should be developed
Î Process for tracking ENG CI resources should be developed
Î ENG should develop explicit metrics for success, evaluation processes
and expectation for accountability for CI projects
Î Selection, review and evaluation processes for CI programs should reward
usability and usefulness, and disincentivize poorly designed infrastructure
or infrastructure without a sufficient community

Î ENG CIWG has a process for identifying and tracking CI related projects
and investments
Î Every two years Science Resource Statistics (SRS) conducts survey of
research facilities – including computing and networking – 2007 survey will
contain questions on network features, grid technology, data storage and
large databases
Î ENG and other directorates need to coordinate the development of NSF-
wide CI project metrics – under OCI leadership
Î EVO solicitation specifically targets community and infrastructure aspects
ENG Investments in CI (FY 04-06 by Category)

The final ENG Totals
column is truncated to
preserve scale, and
$50,000,000 totals $117,317,000.

DCI: Development and Deployment of CI
$20,000,000 RCI: Research Enabling CI
UCI: Use of CI

$10,000,000
ENG Totals
UCI
$0 RCI
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Coordination Recommendations
Î ENG should coordinate with OCI and CIC in provisioning CI
Î In coordination with other directorates and OCI, ENG should
develop a new funding/program model that specifically addresses
the nature of infrastructure
Î ENG, in coordination with OCI, should develop guidelines
requiring that the products of funded CI projects be available in
open domain

Î ENG PD assigned part-time to OCI for coordination purposes
Î Chair of ENG CIWG serves on the newly formed CI Coordinating
Council (CICC) – that reports to CIC
Î ENG and other directorates need to develop funding models and
metrics for CI – under OCI leadership
Î Several joint solicitations and programs are being developed –
CI Team, PetaApps
Planning Recommendations

Î ENG should determine where cross-cutting CI
activities fit within the directorate
Î ENG should develop a framework of priorities and
apply it purposefully to the CI portfolio
Î ENG should discuss and resolve an appropriate set of
framing questions for evaluating CI programs

Î A small set of Engineering CI Research Challenges
should be identified
Î ENG should adopt guidelines to distinguish CI from
other types of research
Î Linking programs should be developed to ensure
synergistic coordination of CI-related research,
development and deployment